1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an online merchandising system and for electronic commerce (EC), which improves usability, and to an online catalog presenting method, a server, a computer program product, and a computer data signal embodied in a carrier wave for realizing the system.
2. Description of the Related Art
As growth of the Internet, “Online Shopping” based on EC technology becomes very popular way of shopping. Such the online shopping service is advantageous to handling various items, because the merchandiser can sell the items without backyard stocks unlike ordinary shop-based merchandising. Though variety of the items, users must go through several steps to find out a target item. It is said that the online shopping users tend to buy the same item constantly. Even if such the “frequenter”, the user must go through the several steps to buy the item. Accordingly, the conventional online shopping services have required the users to have troublesome steps with extra connection time.
To overcome such the inconveniences, Unexamined Japanese Patent Application KOKAI Publication No. 2000-20591 discloses a technique by which a user terminal downloads information of items assigned by a user through the internet online shopping.
According to the above invention, the user can view the item information without establishing connection to the online shopping site, because the information has been downloaded beforehand. However, since it merely records the information on the user terminal, the usability is still unsatisfied. Moreover, once the information is recorded on the user terminal, there is no way to update the information. That is, the user may view out-of-date information. For example, it may show prices before price revision was done. In this case, the price may be fluctuated at a phase where the user buys the item concerned.
Unexamined Japanese Patent Application KOKAI Publication Nos. 2001-22824 and 2002-56312 disclose similar techniques for storing information regarding to the order (purchase) on the online shopping to be utilized for order cancellation or next order in the future.
In those techniques, information represents only items to be bought. In other words, the information lacks in showing relationship between the items concerned and others being associated to them. Therefore, if the user intends to buy those associated items, troublesome extra steps for selecting them are required.
The present invention has been made as a solution for the above inconveniences, and it is an object of the present invention to provide an online merchandising system, an online catalog presenting method, a server, a computer program product, and a computer data signal embodied in a carrier wave, those effective for improving the usability on the online shopping.